Emilie Conway Trio - You Won't Forget Me: Exploring Maeve Brennan

About this event

Following a sell out performance in the National Concert Hall and performances in NYC and Chicago in 2017, Emilie Conway is delighted to bring her celebration of writer Maeve Brennan to Dunamaise Arts Centre​, together with her Trio, some of Ireland\s leading jazz musicians: Johnny Taylor, piano and Damian Evans, bass​​.

Born January 6, 1917, in Ann Enright's words, ​"a true daughter of the Rising," Maeve​ Brennan grew up in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh, before moving to the US in 1934 when her father became Ireland's first ambassador to Washington. In 1949 she became a staff writer for The New Yorker and wrote Talk of the Town columns under the pseudonym, the Long-Winded Lady.

​The Emilie Conway Trio ​explore the soundscape of Brennan's life and work with short readings, spoken word and music ranging from traditional to jazz​ and originals​. The performance follows Maeve's journey from post-civil war Ireland to the glamour of cosmopolitan New York in the 1950s. Indeed,​ Maeve’s columns for The New Yorker read like jazz: their cleverness, lightness and incisiveness show the dexterity of a master improviser which belies a deeper, Rembrandt-like meditation on the human condition - so hauntingly audible in the ballad-like quality of her short stories and her novella.